Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard
- Thread starter Darth Vader
- Start date
It's as much the FTC lawyers somehow not being able to readily references sources in their own economist's report (no idea why the hell they weren't ready with that) and this judge thinking EVERYONE has a high-end gaming PC (literally) and somehow thinking the Switch is more likely to be chosen than the Xbox because it's portable. Seems unaware of the power disparity. Either way, she thinks it's more likely that gamers would abandon PS for those over Xbox so she's not sure how it's an unfair advantage for Xbox.
The fact that Xbox would rake revenue from the games and not just the hardware seems to be a non-factor for her rn, all about platforms.
This... is ugly.
TL;DR Judge has a lot of Boomer energy in regards to how video games work and that kinda bodes well for Microsoft.
Then MS won already, because after Bethesda and Activision Blizzard comes Sega, CDPR, Take-Two and Sony/PlayStation dies in the crossfire of Apple/Google vs MS.
PlayStation is not Nintendo and will not survive as a niche console on the strength of it's own exclusives if it's forced to become that.
So basically they need to divest PlayStation to a bigger corp so it can "survive" but lose its identity entirely?
Bro, why do you always have the most extremely overreactive takes that don't seem to take consequences into account?
This isn't even touching on how it wouldn't be worth it to Sony to even keep the division if they'd have to split their profits that heavily. Cuz ain't NO company gonna partner with them and foot the majority of the bill for acquisitions and take less than 50% or demands of full ROI within X amount of time.
www.kick.com/707555 for the stream to listen for yourselves. Break until 5 past the hour.
I haven't been listening until just before the break, but from the tweets, Corley has been pressing the FTC to prove Lee's 20% is a valid number (of people that will switch). She berated them on this point to the extent that it looked like she was clearly pro-MS.
She doesn't understand that most people who worked from home during the pandemic probably did so with corporate laptops, not $1500 gaming PCs, and that Switch is clearly a different market - if you look at the overlap of games between Xbox and PS and Xbox and Nintendo, you'll see a massive disparity in the size of the overlap.
Not sure if she's naive or just stupid, but she's also trying to look for a title analogous to COD in Zenimax - there is none, FTC lawyer offered TES - but point is this is unprecedented and incentive to foreclose is not just about immediate loss of revenue from PS. Microsoft WILL try to maximise revenue, but have been proven to be duplicitous in getting approval for revenue-poor strategies in the past from their board, and will benefit greatly if they're the only game in town at the end of all this.
I haven't been listening until just before the break, but from the tweets, Corley has been pressing the FTC to prove Lee's 20% is a valid number (of people that will switch). She berated them on this point to the extent that it looked like she was clearly pro-MS.
She doesn't understand that most people who worked from home during the pandemic probably did so with corporate laptops, not $1500 gaming PCs, and that Switch is clearly a different market - if you look at the overlap of games between Xbox and PS and Xbox and Nintendo, you'll see a massive disparity in the size of the overlap.
Not sure if she's naive or just stupid, but she's also trying to look for a title analogous to COD in Zenimax - there is none, FTC lawyer offered TES - but point is this is unprecedented and incentive to foreclose is not just about immediate loss of revenue from PS. Microsoft WILL try to maximise revenue, but have been proven to be duplicitous in getting approval for revenue-poor strategies in the past from their board, and will benefit greatly if they're the only game in town at the end of all this.
Well we all know MS is the leader in bullshittery and the fact the judge does have a inkling of what she's actually reviewing and what could happen as an end result is a given that MS is going to get away with this whole thing scot free. All I've got to say is Sony better be ready to take off the gloves and start locking those exclusives down and start playing the MS game and start buying Publishers that make them money. MS isn't going to stop after this.
If they are not willing to make big moves to fight a competitor making a $7B acquisition, followed by a $70B acquisition and promising to keep doing it? Yes.
What do you think are the consequences of allowing MS to control: The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake, Fallout, Diablo, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Starcraft, Overwatch, THPS, Crash, etc?
MLB on Xbox, Marathon on Xbox, PlayStation games on PC, Sega as a close partner to Xbox, GaaS pivot from Sony, this doesn't not end well for PlayStation.
People believed MS would not make a move for a Japanese publisher but now we have really strong evidence that they will.
edit: you should also look into what joint venture is, if Sony doesn't have the money they can bring someone in to co-own the division and spin it as a separate entity. Much better than just letting MS outspend them out of the console business.
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Result of this PI ruling is irrelevant. Either MS tries to close over the CMA and gets broken up by Biden admin or they submit to Britannia.
After all the evidence put forward, sounds like it didn’t even matter lol. The American legal system serves money and power.
"Prove that the potential to cut the legs out from under their top competitor at will would be anti-competitive or bad for the consumer."
She has to be being deliberately obtuse at this point.
They can’t keep buying developers and publishers indefinitely. Regulators might as well not exist at that point.
Well, she unsurprisingly is, just like the EU and most regulators pretended not to see it so does she.
So you are going to reward MS for this? How does that make any sense? None of this is going to have short term impact.Ms won then
What a sad day
Looks like I'm gonna buy Xbox if this deal gets approved
Sony has over 120 millions customers so it directly affects them. She's clueless or what?
So like, he's trying to make an argument for reasons ms would have to foreclose and prove the harm that would be happen to consumers, but he's fumbling. HARD. Just like the trial, he has placed too much emphasis on Sony.
Oh yeah, this too, she believes that most cod players have a high end gaming pc on ready
But we have no choice sadly
Cuz ms is gonna buy the industry
And the cma can't do anything about it
At the very least go play on PC instead of on Xbox if that's how it turns out. But PS5 will still be far stronger for the rest of this gen no matter what. MS play is for the long term, they'll pull all support from Sony when the time is right (probably early next gen).But we have no choice sadly
Cuz ms is gonna buy the industry
And the cma can't do anything about it
